Luca Lacalamita

Luca Lacalamita, at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence since January 4th 2011, was born in 1985 but his resume includes a series of restaurants that's very hard to find in a colleague his same age. Not that this would automatically guarantee the crystalline talent of this promising chef pâtissier, but having cooked next to true masters is a good clue to bet on his future.

Lacalamita is Apulian, from Trani and has graduated in hotel and restaurant management studies in Molfetta in 2002. In 2004 he was already in England. The first step in his wandering was the Osteria dell’Arancio in King’s Road, in London, a place where he thought of the mise en place of dessert and bread for every service. In 2005 he's called by the Dorchester, today the headquarters of the triple starred Alain Ducasse: Luca works in the chocolate room producing pralines, tiny chocolate sculptures and petit four for the daily afternoon tea. The following year he's working at the court of Gordon Ramsey at the Petrus, again in London, as assistant to the chef pâtissier.

In 2006 he goes back to his homeland and enters the doors of the Cracco-Peck in Milan, a restaurant in which he has an important triple task: 3 people report to him, he proposes new desserts to Carlo Cracco and defines with his assistant Matteo Baronetto the seasonal dessert menu. From March to October 2007 he's at Ferran Adrià's Bulli, for him, as for many other dessert chefs (see Loretta Fanella) it's an epiphany: «it's the experience that has marked me the most, emotionally, sensorially and intellectually», he has explained in his blog Note dalla Cucina in the days following the closure of the most influential restaurant of the past twenty years.

In October 2007 he arrives at Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana where Lacalamita supervises the work of the commis, conceives new desserts and helps to define the dessert menu with a seasonal frequency. The last stop in this incredible pre-Florentine journey, in the period between the end of 2008 and January 2011, is at Akelarre's in San Sebastián, another 3 starred restaurant: in the shadow of Pedro Subijana he manages a team of 5 people, the set up of the mise en place, and proposes new ideas and dishes, contributing with creativity to the study of new concepts. Today Lacalamita is the perfect sweet complement to Italo Bassi and Riccardo Monco, all three of them protagonists, in different halls, of the Identità Milano 2012 congress.

Has participated in

Identità Milano

by

Gabriele Zanatta

born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, he's been working as a co-author and coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since the first edition (2007), he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches Cuisine global trends into several institutes. twitter @gabrielezanatt